


Defrosted

by Potboy



Series: Defrosted [1]
Category: Stargate Universe
Genre: M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-29
Updated: 2015-11-29
Packaged: 2018-05-04 00:00:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5312057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Potboy/pseuds/Potboy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>David Telford to the rescue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Defrosted

**Author's Note:**

  * For [whereismygarden](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whereismygarden/gifts).



This time everything goes smoothly. David wouldn't have stood for anything less. From the moment the search began for a new Icarus planet, information has been kept tight, and constant daily testing has been imposed on those involved. 

The only one he couldn't be sure of was Eli, in his splendid isolation in Destiny's shuttle. The issue of Eli's reliability has occasionally pressed on David's mind - because they've been able to follow the boy's host whenever he used the stones to visit Earth, but they couldn't be sure that Varro or one of his people hadn't got to him some time before stasis, on the other end. Nor could they be sure if Earth was the only place the stones connected. 

But now, stepping through from Iapyx Base (Daniel Jackson apparently big on obscure sons of Daedalus), some of David's fears unlock from around his chest, and he can breathe deeper of recycled spacesuit air than he has at any time in the last two and a half years. 

Destiny is around him again, and oh God. He walks aside to let his team bring the supplies through and spends a precious thirty seconds with his eyes closed, breathing, accepting, settling the mad seethe of memories and emotions this place brings back. Meditation - turns out it's not just for kooks after all. 

"You're really here! I didn't think you'd make it, but wow! Is that food? And you brought power sources right? Because if you didn't, you're kinda screwing us all." 

Eli thumps out of the darkness, rippling puddle light strobing over his metallic surface, a scatter of reflections in the airless gate room. They had agreed not to power up or air up until the team was actually through, it's as cold as space in here, and everyone is suited. 

"Relax Eli," David says, because the power sources came through first, clutched to their minders' chests like babies. "Two ZPMs just like you ordered." He nods to his chief scientist, with a mingled sense of achievement and resentment. The guy had made him go through nearly three years of therapy before signing up for the mission, which is more than he would have conceded to acquire almost anyone else. 

He's got to admit it helped though. Lots of things he was fooling himself about are clearer now. Lots of tangles have been unpicked. David is less burdened, sharper. He knows better who he is and what he wants. "You and Rodney get on with setting them up. Keep me in the loop, and gimme a call when everything's warmed and repressurized." 

Eli rocks back on his heels, and the last flare of light as the gate closes behind David shows his eyes looking wide and nonplussed. He's been on Earth most days in someone's body, after the shrinks insisted three years' total isolation would drive him nuts and useless, so you'd think he'd be used to David's efficiency by now, but apparently he expects more coddling once they're in the same fleshspace. 

"Well, uh, yeah. Hello to you too. Congrats on being the first physically present person I've spoken to in three years. It's a day to celebrate!" 

"We'll celebrate when we know we'll live." 

Rodney takes the kid off his hands. For all his hypochondria and endless effluent of nervous chat, McKay's solid, and David's thankful for at least one brilliant scientist he can trust without reservation. He sends a couple of tech supports with the geniuses to hold wires and open panels, makes sure that Major Neely is supervising the removal of the stores to kitchen and infirmary where they're needed. Everyone on his team is trained in Ancient systems, and he's brought enough officers to fill all the gaps of Destiny's peculiar hierarchy. 

This little crew's going to be a smooth running machine when he's finished with it. The poor lieutenants, and Everett, who've been shouldering so much with so little help from above and below, they're going to wake up to find all their problems have been solved overnight. It's the least he can do. 

In the last couple of months, Eli and McKay have practised fitting the ZPMs into a model of Destiny's power circuits until they have it down to five minutes, but David's still pleasantly surprised when lights begin to flick on along the floor. There's a rattling industrial groan, transmitted through his feet, and plumes of snowy steam hiss from the vents along the walls, as the life support system pumps warm damp air into the absolute cold. 

He tramps over to the nearest console, and sure enough it too flicks to life as he approaches. Clicking through to the life support diagnostic, he notices that no new breaches are being registered, as he watches the temperature and pressure bars slide into the green. 

“Okay,” says McKay over the helmet comms. “Call me a genius, we have air and power.” 

“Yeah, as long as something new doesn't blow,” Eli grumbles in the background, maybe a little put out by being forced yet again into the sidekick role. He'll get used to it, David thinks. It's not a problem now, and David's brought Captain Layeni aboard, a military shrink specializing in the kind of problems that arise in submarine crews, to make sure it doesn't become a problem later. 

He strips off his helmet and suit, puts it with the stores to be racked, and gives the nod to Captain Hussain, who's been rifling through the medical stores, putting together a resuscitation kit. 

Everyone else knows that when the supplies are properly disposed of, the infirmary and kitchen are up and running, they have permission to look for quarters and unpack whatever personal possessions they brought through with them. David should probably be doing that himself – Destiny's old crew aren't going anywhere, and another day in storage won't kill them. 

But taking command is only one of David's priorities. The other is rescue. 

If he closes his eyes, he can still feel the handshake, the second hand resting on top of his thumb, like a double blessing, like an absolution. Shit. They've been through so much. So much over the years. And he's... He'd like to think the warmth of that parting meant they were still okay, but he hasn't forgotten the devastation of turning up via the stones and finding out he'd got them all killed. He'd broken Everett's spirit and then his heart, and then he'd said 'you're on your own' and left him to put himself to sleep with no guarantee he'd ever wake up again. 

That's not what David calls being friendly. It's not the kind of performance he expects of himself. 

He's worked patiently and relentlessly for the past three years to make sure there's still time to fix a relationship he didn't even know was this important to him until the shrinks dug it out of all the bullshit he'd been burying it in. And that was fine – that was absolutely fine, it took as long as it took – but he's done with waiting now. 

His stride opens out until Dr. Hussain is forced to jog to keep up as he marches down the steadily warming corridors, the vents around his feet going from snow to steam to hot air as the temperature reaches optimal. 

Eli had said the stasis banks were doing fine – he'd been monitoring them, nursing them through fluctuating power levels daily. But hearing it is not the same as seeing, and they both slow to a stop in front of the rows of blue faces. There's an eerie, underwater cathedral feel to the place, magnified by the knocking heartbeat of Destiny's engines pulsing beneath their feet. 

Everett's standing with his head down, like he's tired. Like even in everlasting sleep it's all weighing him down. 

As David raises his hand to the controls of the pod, he's suddenly back in midsummer sunshine, the asphalt and dust of the parade square, by the wire fence, where he'd gone to have a smoke, and Air Cadet Simpson had called him 'chief' to impress his gang of sycophants. The 'oh fuck' moment when he'd realized that trying to take all five of them down had not in retrospect been a wise move, and then the 'what?' as someone behind him had weighed in on his side. 

His blood had been up. He'd not been prepared to say 'thanks' to anyone, especially not some white kid who thought he needed a saviour, so he'd turned around, about to growl 'fuck off,' and the world had lost its footing for a moment, because damn. No guy with a bloody nose and a buzz cut that did nothing for him should look that good. 

“Sorry,” Everett'd said, as David's world got up again, changed, and then he'd laughed. “Where should we hide the bodies?” 

They'd bonded, romantically enough, over the punishment duty that followed: scrubbing out the latrines. It's hard to stay distant with anyone who's on their knees next to you, elbow deep in shit for your sake. 

After that, well, he's pretty sure they both look back on it as a golden period. He coached Everett through some of the technical stuff, Everett coached him through the group projects. He made sure they had a little fun every now and again, Everett made sure they didn't go too crazy and get themselves killed. They'd swapped notes and clothes and girlfriends and it had been wild. 

_You swapped girlfriends_ , says Dr. Weiss in his head, leaning forward with a look of friendly interest. _Why do you think you did that?  
_

Just remembering it always makes David smirk and wonder what the guy would have said to the body-swapping incident. It had become something of a game for him to try to make the old boy jump in genuine surprise, but that part had not been David's secret to share. _Yeah, yeah, I get what you're trying to say. I do._

Now he's just procrastinating. They can have a nice chat about old times when Everett's out, when David no longer has to harbour this gnawing little worry that something will go wrong with the defrosting process, that he's come all this way to repair – to expand – a relationship with a corpse. 

Kicking that worry's ass before it has time to get its claws in, he hits the sequence of controls to deactivate the pod. The lights inside change from blue to amber, as the frost dissolves from the window. 

The door slides up. There's a moment when – fuck acceptance – David's going to wring the universe's neck for putting him through this, and then Everett raises his head, looks at him. It's not until he flicks his gaze to Dr. Hussein, with her SGU uniform and her Captain's bars, her uncapped syringe of adrenaline, that the knot of his frown eases. 

“You could look happier to be rescued,” David says, because it hurts to know that Everett was checking to make sure he wasn't back with the Lucian Alliance, however justified the reaction might be. “I brought bourbon.” 

That gets him the smile he was aiming for. Everett presses a hand to his forehead, like he feels rough. “Eli?” 

“In the engine room being passive-aggressive with McKay.” Yeah, that's definitely pain, or fatigue, something. The worry starts back up, all the little scratching teeth of it. “Get down here and let the doctor check you out.” 

“But he's okay?” 

“He's fine,” David says, watching Everett try to coordinate himself to take a step down into the room. “He helped plan this whole thing. Whoa.” 

He gets there in time to catch Everett as the guy's knees buckle, the solid weight of him comforting even while David frets. He lowers them both so they are sitting together on the lip of the stasis box, because it's been forever since they've been in the same room, in the right bodies. This press of shoulder and thigh against him are the closest to what he really wants that he has come in years. 

“Sorry,” says Everett again, “I don't think it's serious. Just dizzy. Tired.” 

“You let me be the judge of that sir,” Hussain runs through the quick checklist, pulse, blood pressure, temperature, listening to the heart and lungs, and then she nods. “Best I can guess is metabolic shock on top of pre-existing fatigue. You're going to have to spend the night in the infirmary, where I can watch you.” 

“I want my people out.” 

It's maybe not the time to talk about feelings. It's probably not even the time to say “I've now got three years more seniority than you, and I'm in charge, so shut the fuck up and let me do this my way.” That kind of sentiment has never gone down well in the past. 

David gets Everett's arm over his shoulder, pulls them both to their feet. There's light and heat in the room and a fully stocked infirmary to go to. He is hugging his living friend tight under the guise of holding him up and he's interestingly conscious of that pit-bull little body against his. 

“We'll get them out,” he agrees, because that was the plan all along. “But you're our test case. Let the doctor figure out the best procedure with you, then the others can be revived with less risk. 

“We're going to get them all out,” he repeats, looking at the sleepers over his friend's bowed head, catching a glimpse of sharp, spare features that even now thrusts through the fabric of his joy like a pin. There's one man who could do to stay safely contained in a box. “Well, maybe not Rush.”

Everett straightens up a little, shoves him in the side with a strength that delights him, already getting some of his fight back. “It's the man's life's work, David. Don't be a dick.” 

There's going to be a lot of this. A lot of cajoling, of persuading. He's not fool enough to imagine that the crew that formed around Everett is easily going to adapt to his own entirely different style. He knows he's got a lot of ground to make up in terms of trust for everyone. And what Everett will think of the campaign of pursuit David has mapped out for him once he's well, he still has no clue. But right now all David is really aware of is the rolling glossy warmth of his own triumph, because he's got the chance again. He's got the chance to do it all. 

If there's one thing David Telford is not afraid of, it's a challenge.


End file.
